Solar Installations in the United States

Sarah Unbehaun
May 2018

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The Data

Data by county on:

  • Solar installations (NREL Open PV)
  • Direct normal irradiation, PV-suitable small buildings (NSRDB)
  • Electricity prices and utility territories (EIA)
  • Population and median income (Census)
  • 2004-2012 presidential elections (USGS, via Hello Word Data)

Feature Importance

Random Forest regression

Dependent variable: total installations in a county
Top predictors:

  • Population
  • Number of small buildings
  • Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI)
  • Average cost per watt

Other predictors:

  • Median Income
  • Percent democratic votes (2004, 2008 and 2012)
  • Electricity price
  • Area in square miles
  • Percent of small buildings suitable for solar
    $R^{2}$ on test data = .72
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Questions?